In chemistry, concentration refers to the uniform gathering of a particular chemical compound or molecule. For example, a highly concentrated herbal extract removes the non-active compounds of the herb, leaving only the bio-active constituents in a greater, denser abundance. The name of the concentration game: less is more.

Nootropics for concentration operate under the same principle by strengthening the brain’s mental defenses against unnecessary and unproductive distractions, keeping your focus solely on what’s important.

Many use synthetic stimulants and cheap caffeine supplements to improve their concentration, yet such substances only offer temporary, potentially harmful boosts on cognition. This is why more and more people are turning to natural nootropics for their highly concentrated brain boosts.

Concentration is Looking, Not Overlooking

In nootropic and work productivity terms, we view concentration as a wholly positive cognitive measurement. To have concentration is to “keep your eye on the prize,” so to speak. Workers with high concentration may accomplish a task without intermittently staring at their phone, looking out the window, or aimlessly meandering through random thoughts.

However, clinically speaking, “concentration” is a neutral term. Concentration is only good insomuch that what we’re concentrating on is good. Gamers are all too aware of this:

Difficult video games completely absorb gamers, simplifying their focus on the screen in front of them as they ignore potentially important periphery sounds, such as a phone call or knock at the door. Easy games increase the gamers’ susceptibility to distractions.

Depending on your perspective, you may view complete absorption in video games as a distraction from what’s truly important or productive. Yet, clinically speaking, this is concentration: the gamer’s focus in concentrated on the game.

Concentration is simply the mind’s capacity to shun distractions while focusing its attention on a particular point of interest.

A better measurement of concentration isn’t the mind’s capacity to focus on something but rather its ability to protect its focus against distractions. On the flipside, a mind attuned to everything is attuned to nothing. Concentration helps the mind look so as to prevent overlooking.

Due to the psychological elements involved in concentration, you’ll need to first find the motivation to “look” at what’s important and meaningful before adjusting your concentration. With that aside, there are two general factors that affect our levels of concentration[1]:

Exogenous Factors of Concentration

The exogenous (or externally occurring) factors of concentration include measurements such as time pressure and intellectual challenge. Procrastinators often claim to work better under time constraints, and there’s a valid explanation for this: working closer to a deadline increases concentration on the task at hand, reducing the worker’s susceptibility to distractions because it’s officially go time! Likewise, an easy-to-perform task not only diminishes concentration, it might remove the desire to complete it altogether. After all, easy tasks often lead to cheap rewards, and cheap rewards aren’t worth the concentration. Without exogenous high stakes, what’s the point?

Endogenous Factors of Concentration

Here’s where nootropics might help: endogenous (or internally occurring) factors involved in concentration include trait capacities for motivation and attentional engagement. Internal designs related to motivation and attention — for example, the catecholaminergic neurotransmitter pathway — may play a key role in the mind’s ability to concentrate. Poor attention-related neurochemical levels may contribute to affective disorders, such as ADD or hyperactivity, increasing a person’s susceptibility to distractions.

Meditation may help reduce internal distractions, such as emotional imbalance and hyperactive cognitive processes.

Natural Nootropics vs. Synthetic Stimulants

Many prescribed stimulant users carry stories of how their stimulant high resulted in intense concentration on trivial tasks, such as counting the threads in the carpet or reorganizing your desk’s pens. Synthetically stimulated cognition supplies plenty of examples of misguided concentration.

Relating to the Catecholamine Hypothesis of attention, stimulants increase catecholamine (e.g., dopamine, norepinephrine) activity, which may help with attention disorders related to catecholamine imbalance. However, the problem with synthetic catecholaminergic stimulation is that:

A) the effects are temporary;

B) the effects are so intense that trivial distractions may become points of heavy mental concentration.

The actions of natural nootropics, on the other hand, are subtler and less temporary. As opposed to stimulants, which synthetically enhance the brain’s concentration capacity, nootropics naturally boost brainpower, resulting in minimal risk of side effects.

By enhancing the brain’s natural structures related to focus, attention, and concentration, nootropics make for a better long-term answer to poor concentration.

The Possible Side Effects of Stimulants

Intense, synthetic concentration has a temporary time limit and is often followed by the infamous cognitive “crash,” which may be described as a decrease in concentration and overall brainpower.[2] Even mild stimulants, such as caffeine, may impair cognition over time, if used too frequently and densely. Simply put, stimulants over-stimulate the brain’s natural catecholaminergic pathways, threatening to diminish them over time. If unaddressed, excess stimulant usage may contribute to the following side effects:

How Nootropics Can Boost Concentration

Supporting Catecholamine Activity

Perhaps the best starting place for improving focus, attention, concentration, etc. is catecholamine neurotransmitters. When catecholamines are off, concentration is off. And nootropics for concentration may help by:

Supplying bio-active catecholamine precursors

Improving catecholamine synthesis

Enhancing catecholamine receptor sensitivity

While the catecholaminergic pathway isn’t the only route to better concentration, it’s a great starting point, given its relevance to attention disorders. And nootropics outperform stimulants in this arena by actually benefiting catecholamine activity, rather than overworking it to the point of inevitable exhaustion.[3]

Ongoing high levels of concentration may be mentally taxing on brain energy as is. Under threat of brain burnout and fatigue, concentration may be improved by energizing cognitive enhancers.

Improving Stress Resistance

Related to the catecholamine hypothesis, stress negatively impacts concentration by decreasing catecholamine levels. Under conditions of high stress and activity (e.g., conditions that require high concentration), the brain burns through catecholamines to stay sharp and alert. Adaptogen nootropics, or substances that help the body adapt to stress, may improve the brain and body’s resistance to stress, thereby indirectly protecting catecholamines against stress-related depletion.

Bolstering Working Memory

An important aspect of concentration is working memory, the task-related function of short-term memory. While limited in capacity and duration, working memory helps us retain short-term information, such as a new phone number, long enough to accomplish a given task. The overlap between working memory and concentration makes sense: both cognitive processes involve attention on completing or observing a task. Without sufficient working memory, we lack the capacity to concentrate.

Mind Lab Pro® Nootropics for Concentration

L-Theanine (+ Caffeine)

We’ll begin our first entry with a compromise: L-theanine + caffeine. For better cognitive energy and concentration, many turn to caffeine, usually by way of their morning coffee. Many nootropic enthusiasts might be turned off to caffeine altogether, given that it’s not a true nootropic; yet, it’s undeniably the world’s favorite stimulant drug, and for good reason: caffeine reliably supplies feel-good mental performance boosts.

The adverse effects of caffeine may be offset by L-theanine, a popular nootropic amino with significant anxiolytic properties. By promoting calming alpha brainwave frequencies, L-theanine seems to help relax over-active cognitive pathways while improving focus and concentration.[5] What’s more, when paired with caffeine, L-theanine’s focus-sharpening benefits seem to only increase, as the amino reduces the jittery side effects of caffeine while sustaining the stimulant’s focus benefits.[6]

Particularly when a task requires split concentration, or multitasking, stress may significantly diminish mental performance in ways that may be avoided by N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine. Research suggests that L-tyrosine supplementation may improve cognition[7-9]:

Task-related performance for intense multi-tasking activities.

Focus and concentration affected by loud, audible distractions.

Mental and mood stability affected by sleep deprivation.

In other words, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine works as a “clutch” mental performance enhancer by sustaining concentration under high stress, high activity, low energy conditions. A great nootropic for competitive thinkers and athletes.

Citicoline (CDP Choline)

Other cholinergic nootropics work by simply by supplying choline, a precursor for neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Citicoline (or CDP Choline) outperforms other cholinergics by supplying both:

Choline – a compound required for the syntheses of phosphatidylcholine (cell membrane phospholipid) and acetylcholine, a brain chemical associated with memory and learning.

Cytidine – a compound required for the synthesis of RNA nucleotide uridine, a nootropic with significant cellular repair and energy production benefits.

Combined, citicoline’s compounds seem to improve cognition by promoting acetylcholine activity and synaptic plasticity (neuronal growth and connectivity). By enhancing these pathways, citicoline not only benefits neuroregeneration but cell-to-cell communication, or neurotransmissions. As animal research indicates, the choline + uridine combination seems to improve “selective attention and spatial learning in [spontaneously hypertensive rats].”[10]

For healthy human subjects, research found the Cognizin® brand of citicoline effective at improving attention, motor speed, and focus-related performance under healthy cognitive conditions.[11-12] In other words, citicoline has the potential to improve concentration under both healthy and impaired cognitive conditions.

Bacopa Monnieri

Bacopa monnieri is a hugely popular adaptogenic herb and a staple of the Ayurvedic healing tradition. As one of the best herbal nootropics for short-term memory and information processing, Bacopa seems to work by:

Bacopa administration to healthy subjects aged 20 to 60 improved working memory and precision during rapid identification tests, as compared to placebo.

Relating to the working memory function of concentration, Bacopa seems to benefit mental performance by improving the mind’s capability to process task-related information. Look for a standardized Bacopa extract with a high concentration of bio-active bacosides for best results.

Maritime Pine Bark Extract

As a nootropic newcomer, Maritime Pine Bark Extract (Pinus pinaster) supplies a surprisingly rich complex of antioxidant flavonoids called proanthocyanidins, or oligomeric proanthocyanidin complexes (OPC). While these compounds seem to naturally protect the tree against harsh coastal climates, they also provide significant neuroprotective advantages to the human brain.

Maritime pine bark extract’s OPCs have become a popular source of life-extending antioxidants, possessing an antioxidant capacity that is20x greater than that of vitamin E and 50x greater than that of vitamin C.[14]

What’s more, the subjects in the study demonstrated a relapse in poor cognitive performance and concentration following one month of terminated maritime pine bark extract supplementation, demonstrating the lasting effects of OPC’s bio-benefits.

By enhancing the brain’s natural pathways to better concentration and intensity, Mind Lab Pro® achieves 100% Brainpower™ for the short- and long-term.

Boosting concentration via substances is a risky game to play, given the high count of risky substances on the market. Yet, in 2019, we’re looking to play a new, healthier, and (ultimately) more effective game with natural nootropics for concentration. No fluff or trivial stuff — Mind Lab Pro® concentrates its focus only on what works.